Death Run: Part I

I finalised my will today. Not a very cheery subject I know but very practical now I have become a runner. I decided to take the opportunity to run home from the lawyers house since it is exactly 5km from home and my husband escorted the will by car. A bit of a death wish running holding your will really. Imagine if I did get hit by a car or had a heart attack and they found me in the ditch holding my will. Everyone would be extremely impressed by my practicality and organisational skills for sure and would talk about this rather than my crap running. Because that is what you do when people die, you leave out the bad bits. Which is a shame I think as those are usually the most interesting parts. But I digress....

In Buddhist traditions it is very important to meditate on death. They are not morbid, it is just the most effective way of quickly putting life in perspective. There are various ways to go about it. I highly recommend “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” it is a rollicking good read and very thought provoking. I usually drag it out once a year. One meditation I have always been fascinated by is you go to a cemetery at midnight, by yourself and meditate. If that sounds scary than imagine doing it in India where you could smell the burning bodies, see the bones poking about and hear animals creeping in for a midnight snack.

However this is tame compared to the Marathon Monks. Having a lazy day? Lacking motivation? I highly recommend watching this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S06oMxdt40A Totally riveting. They run themselves physically to the point of death and then meditate. Some actually die. Simplified, I think the point is to confront your own death in meditation so that when your time is up you do not waste all your energy freaking out and miss the momentous event. It feels like I am dying sometimes when I do run so to me this is a logical connection.

I am psyching myself up to do a death run. I have always liked the idea of running in the woods. Which is handy since I live in the Nova Scotian wilderness. The problem is that packs of coyotes and bears like living there too and I swear there is a wildcat or puma lurking around. Even thinking about it while I ran on the safety of the Gulf Shore Road gave me the willies and I was so preoccupied thinking about death that I ran my first 5km the whole way. I strongly suspect that once I summon the courage to do the Death Run that it will be my fastest. If I survive to tell the tale.

“Live each day as if it were your life.” One of the Marathon Monks said that and it really inspired me. I have to run each run as if it was my last. Because it very well could be.